


Renewed

by mmmdraco



Category: Hikaru no Go
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-17
Updated: 2012-09-17
Packaged: 2017-11-14 10:12:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 639
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/514135
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mmmdraco/pseuds/mmmdraco
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Touya Kouyou finds something new in his life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Renewed

After resigning his titles, Touya Kouyou felt like a new man. Really, not even a man, but a child. In all of his adult life, he'd never been so free of responsibility. He had no major debts. Akira was old enough to take care of himself. It was a good feeling.

For almost the last decade, Kouyou had felt the weight of the world pressing down on his shoulders with every stone that he played. He recognized every move in every game as having come from some ten or twenty games before it that had all utilized the same formations and the same cautious techniques all honed over time as though they were all reaching in the same direction for the Hand of God and had _any_ clue of where to look. And it was this, really, that had been so amazing about his game against "sai". Because, certainly there were familiar patterns present within that game. But there were also whole worlds of play that were hinted at and pointed toward. By the end of the game, go was something new and fascinating again.

He had played game after game now against various partners and go was thrilling again. He tried new things and they didn't all work, but it brought a fervor back to his life that hadn't been there since he'd started making payments on the house back when he didn't have enough to buy it outright. A brief closing of his eyes could bring him back to the moment that Akiko told him she was pregnant and how they had cried and had to decide whether to tell anyone. It brought back those first moments of teaching Akira how to hold the stones as he sat on Kouyou's lap far too solemn for a little boy, but boisterous in his desire to learn the game that occupied so much of his father's time. It brought back so much of his youth that he felt it in his soul: life.

Life that had been slowly draining away from him as though his ki had a hole in in, now resolved itself around him. As he played in international leagues, he found more and more hands questing for the Hand of God, and he, too, was beginning to quest again. By the standards of the go world, he was still a young man and in his prime, but it was nice to feel the reminder when he was still young enough to appreciate his wife's beauty and the joy of travel and the wonder of a kaya board topped with a hundred stones of black and white. 

For far too many years now, he had been a staunchly above-board citizen of Japan who paid his taxes early and wore traditional clothing whenever remotely appropriate and bowed the correct distance down when he met far more distinguished and honored men than himself, but now he felt apart from that somehow. 

On his last visit to Korea, he took his wife to Jejudo and wore swim trunks and a floral-print shirt the entire time. It was amazing to go places as a tourist and to enjoy them for the sake of enjoying things. The island had been lovely and so had Akiko. The sight of her with a flower tucked in her hair brought him back to those first moments again.

Each sight he partook of now showed possibilities he'd never managed to see before. Things ugly and beautiful, simple and complex... There were moments that reminded him of his age such as waking up in the morning with a stiff neck or taking his heart medication, but they weren't the moments he lived for, but merely lived through, so they paled in comparison.

He was not a young man anymore, but perhaps he was something even better: renewed.


End file.
